Car bomb kills six Unifil peacekeepers in Lebanon

Six UN peacekeepers were killed and two seriously injured by an explosion in south Lebanon yesterday, thought to have been caused by a suicide car bomber. The troops were on a routine patrol in the Khiam area when the car exploded near their armoured personnel carrier. A Unifil team was immediately sent to investigate.

Earlier, the Spanish defence minister, José Antonio Alonso, said two Spanish and three Colombian peacekeepers, all serving in the Spanish army, were killed. The ministry later confirmed that one of three other Spanish soldiers injured had also died.

Observers were quick to link the attack to the siege of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in north Lebanon, where more than 160 people have been killed in fighting between the army and the al-Qaida-inspired militants of Fatah al-Islam.

Captured militants have confessed to planning operations on Unifil targets.

Timur Goksel, a former Unifil senior adviser, said he doubted whether, after 36 days of fierce bombardment, the militants in Nahr al-Bared had the capability for such an operation, and believed the attack was likely to have been a jihadist group sympathetic to Fatah al-Islam. "This is very likely to be a solidarity action by any one of the Salafi groups."

The UN force began patrolling south Lebanon and Lebanese coastal waters after last summer's war between Hizbullah and Israel. The Spanish contingent comprises 1,100 of the 13,000 peacekeepers.

Hizbullah's authority in south Lebanon was displaced by the deployment of the Unifil forces and the Lebanese army, and it was quick to denounce the attack on its TV channel, al-Manar. In the north of Lebanon, a midnight raid on a house in Tripoli on Saturday led to a night-long gun battle between the Lebanese army and Sunni militants which left 10 people dead, including a 10-year-old girl.

Residents in the district of Abi Samra, considered the hub of Lebanon's Salafi community, told of a 10-hour siege as the army pounded the building with artillery and rocket-propelled grenades.

An army spokesman confirmed that six militants and one soldier had been killed. A policeman who lived in the building also died. "He was killed in exchanges of fire with the Islamists who had taken his 10-year-old daughter hostage," said the spokesman. "The police sergeant, his daughter, and father-in-law were all killed, and his wife and two sons were wounded." The army spokesman said soldiers arrested three Islamists.

The defence minister, Elias Murr, had declared "victory" over the militants at Nahr al-Bared on Thursday, but sporadic fighting has continued and the government later clarified that the victory was only over the militants' positions in the area known as "the new camp". The old camp, heavily fortified with booby traps, roadside bombs, and sniper dugouts, remains under the militants' control.